3 Ways to Test if Your Nonprofit’s Message Is Breaking Through
Most nonprofits write for grant makers. Answering these questions will help you communicate with everyone else.
By Matt Watkins
Contributor
March 25, 2026 | Read Time: 6 minutes
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The nonprofit world excels at explaining itself to grant makers. But as I discussed in my last column, it often fails to make the nature of its work clear to just about everyone else. What follows is a framework that lays out the next steps: how to detect problematic language and replace it with words that convey what your organization does and why it matters.
I call it the Public Explanation Test, and I’ve been testing this approach with organizations across the country. It has three parts: recognition, traceability, and defensibility. Each part targets a different way the sector has broken faith with the public it claims to serve. Here’s how it works.
Recognition: Are the people you serve visible in your work?
Three questions will help you determine the answer:
Do you replace people with groups? Consider the term “underserved communities.” It sounds precise but it describes no one in particular. By contrast, the phrase “families in neighborhoods where the nearest clinic is 40 minutes away” describes real people you can picture. People defend people. No one rallies for a population category.
Do you consistently turn actions into objects? Do words like “coordination” or “engagement” replace clear descriptions of what people actually do? This problem appears when instead of describing what happens to a real person, the sentence names a program area.
For example, a clear description of child health services might read like this: “We help parents get their sick children to a doctor.” You can picture the moment. A child has a fever. A parent needs help. Someone schedules the appointment and makes sure the family gets to the clinic. But in nonprofit-speak, the same work often appears as “pediatric care access coordination services.” The action disappears. The sick child and worried parent are gone. Helping a family reach a doctor becomes a category called “access coordination.”
You can often spot this problem when program descriptions include a lot of words that end in “-tion” and “-ment,” such as “integration” and “development.” These words usually began as verbs. When you see them, ask yourself what action is actually being performed and write about that instead.
Is your organization the center of every sentence? A phrase like “clients are served through our wraparound model” pushes the person receiving help into the background. Instead, try putting the client at the center: “Kara gets a caseworker who stays with her from intake through housing placement.”
Here’s a simple rule of thumb: If you can’t picture a specific person in a real situation, your description needs a rewrite. Ask who the specific person is that the program exists for, what was happening in their life before your organization showed up, and what was different six months later. The gap between the second and third answers is your program description.
Traceability: Can people follow the money from gift to result?
If a board member, donor, or reporter cannot say in plain terms what would disappear if your program was cut, your language isn’t working. When your messages are vague, it sounds like you have something to hide, and critics supply their own interpretation of events. This problem occurs for the following reasons:
Language focuses on plans instead of programs. A phrase such as “We aim to strengthen the systems that support long-term economic mobility” is a goal. Focus instead on the program that exists today: “We pay for two financial counselors who meet weekly with families until they have three months of emergency savings.” One tells you what an organization believes. The other tells you what it does.
Messages are overly broad. “We improve educational outcomes in the neighborhoods we serve” sounds comprehensive but probably means something more specific: Kids in your afterschool program showed up more and their reading scores improved. Say the specific thing. Precise claims build credibility. Broad claims invite the challenge that collapses the whole argument.
Data is cited without context. “We served 4,200 individuals last year” says nothing about what happened to any of them. Instead, describe results people can picture, repeat, and defend: “We helped 4,200 people claim benefits they were already owed, and 3,100 received an average of $2,400 in annual assistance.”
You’ll know your language isn’t working if you can’t draw a straight line from funding a program to how it changed people’s lives. To test yourself, finish this sentence in under 20 words: “If we lose this funding, [specific people] will no longer have [a specific thing].” If you can’t complete the sentence without going abstract, the description needs work.
Defensibility: Is your explanation comprehensible to people who don’t agree with you?
Most nonprofits direct their messages to those who already support their work. That approach may be effective within the sector but often fails in venues such as government budget hearings and public meetings where the people making decisions aren’t predisposed to support you.
A good example is a class of words common in social justice movements, such as “equity,” “resilience,” “trauma-informed,” and “centering.” These words carry real meaning inside professional circles. Outside those circles, however, they can provoke resistance or misunderstanding. When a word means one thing to you and something threatening or incomprehensible to another person, it becomes a barrier to change rather than a bridge.
The fix does not require abandoning values. But it does require showing what change looks like. “We are committed to equitable, community-driven solutions” doesn’t say anything people can verify. “We hire staff from the neighborhoods we serve and make all decisions with a resident advisory board” describes what you actually do and makes your values clear.
To determine if your language is hitting the mark, read your mission statement to someone outside the sector and ask them to tell you back what your organization does. What they say is almost always closer to the truth than what you wrote. Then rewrite it for a skeptic. You are not trying to change their mind. You are trying to be understood by them. That is a more achievable goal, and the one that matters most when your work is under scrutiny and must be defended.
As critical as these language shifts are, none of them are sustainable without grant maker buy in. Next month I’ll explore how foundations can take direct responsibility for changing and rewarding clearer and more compelling words.
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